Any person who tries to reform society quickly learns how difficult it is to challenge an established order.
Football has been a force in our nation for 150 years. Many folks (mostly males) have been deeply invested, either playing football or sharing spectator passions with dads, relatives, and other guys.
Football is so deeply entrenched in our established order that, last week, a national Republican consultant (Brad Todd) said that, given the U.S. climate of extreme political and social partisanship, “the one thing we can agree on is the team we cheer for.”
If that view is true, the prospect of challenging tackle football is even harder (where else are Democrats and Republicans bonding?)
Yet, those who are part of the growing criticism of football can take heart from the book, Protest Nation, which highlights distinctive American opportunities to strive for change and to speak their truths to any entrenched power.
In recent years, there have been increasing efforts to reform football and make it safer. But can the rising abolitionists carry their protests to end football?
A study of “protest nation” history shows the obstacles as well as ways forward for social critics; it is the genius of our nation to be open to a marketplace of ideas where better views can gain support to supplant past practices.
It is no surprise that protest movements need to gain supportive attention and build numbers. Such efforts can be launched by a single individual – a person who is a powerful speaker and/or an engaging writer.
Think of Samuel Adams, helping to unite the colonists before 1776, both with his town meeting speeches, and with frequent publications. By using as many as 27 pseudonyms, he was almost a one-person grass roots movement!
Think about Ralph Nader, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, and Martin Luther King, Jr. They are among the greatest exemplars of our “protest nation.”
Please note that not one of them was ever elected to public office. They spoke, wrote, publicized, and organized until their objectives reached tipping points for significant change.
All of them demonstrated extraordinary staying power, recognizing that brief spasms of virtue would not yield transformative results.
With Ken Burns launching his Vietnam documentary this week, it is worth noting the ways in which a youth protest movement during the 1960s helped to halt the Vietnam War.
Now, in 2017, football abolitionists have a chance to become part of the arc of history.
No one should underestimate the difficulties of challenging deeply entrenched social practices and values. But, reformers have always understood that, if you are able to change laws and policies, folks will be obliged to adjust their conduct to that new standard.
It is not surprising that we see a highlighting of football violence when the fall season begins.
However, each year – and this year especially – abolitionists get closer to a tipping point for a seismic cultural shift.
Football supporters understandably stress that individuals make free decisions to participate, knowing the risks. Many of them also emphasize that injuries and deaths occur daily from all kinds of accidents but football proceeds in a structured, regulated fashion.
However, the critics and abolitionists are weighing in:
- Headline: “Can we condone a sport that risks lives?”
- Headline: “Don’t Let Kids Play Football”
- Headline: “Love of playing football not worth loss of life” [poll shows that majority of parents will not permit child to play football]
- Headline: “Turning His Back on Football” [Ed Cunningham, former NFL lineman and prominent broadcaster quits football jobs: “I just don’t think the game is safe for the brain.”]
- Headline: “Imagine a world without football” [column by USA Today’s Nancy Armour]
- Headline: “Could Football Ever End?” [Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay writes: “A new concussion study prompts more existential worry – and an early retirement”]
- Headline: “Parents and players, weigh the research on brain trauma” [This USA Today editorial includes a photo of John Urschel who quit the NFL Baltimore Ravens this fall]
New York Giants Hall of Fame player, Harry Carson, joins more NFL retirees, saying: “Knowing what I know now from a neurological standpoint, I would not play.”
“The Uncertain Future of High-School Football in America” (9/8/17 Wall Street Journal) is a full-page discussion of changing demographics that show the dramatic decline of high school football (except for Alabammma and some of the South, there is declining support everywhere else in the nation).
A highlighted feature is that Vermont officials “concede that the sport’s extinction in the state is a possibility.”
In 1777, Vermont led the nation in one of our country’s most profound protest and change movements – by being the first to abolish slavery. Will our nation again go where Vermont leads?
